Advances in Satellite Altimetry

Dear Colleagues,

For more than 40 years, satellite altimeters have observed the heights of the sea level, rivers, lakes, ice, sea ice, freeboard, etc., in respect to the center of the mass of the Earth, as well as significant wave height (SWH) and wind speed over ocean. After the launch of the SEASAT altimeter in 1978, new technology and applications have emerged and expanded tremendously. Altimetry satellites, such as Sentinel-6, Sentinel-3, CryoSat-2, Jason-3, HY-2, Envisat, SARAL/AltiKa, IceSat-2, etc., observe and practically realize ranges by measuring time differences between the transmission and reception of an electromagnetic wave or photon. Earth surface heights are, thus, measured from space-borne instruments using radar or laser signals at an altitude of 800–1300 km with an accuracy of less than ± 1cm. New-generation sensors operate at different signal frequencies (Ku-band, Ka-Band and laser) and implement various measurement principles of pulse-limited, delay–Doppler (unfocused or fully focused), also called synthetic aperture radar (SAR), and SAR interferometric (with two antennas) altimetry.

Altimetry missions monitor the sea level, ocean dynamics, coastal regions, ice sheets, sea ice, inland waters (rivers, lakes, reservoirs, wetlands and discharge/runoff), terrain elevation, soil moisture and the marine geoid globally with a revisit (or non-revisit) period. Many of these observed parameters of the Earth’s surface constitute essential variables for monitoring climate change. Nonetheless, to understand and predict climate variability and change, Earth satellites and observing systems have to generate data records of a sufficient length, consistency, continuity and stability. With the European Copernicus Programme satellite altimetry moving into its operational phase with Sentinel-3 and Sentinel-6, a new principle of fiducial reference measurement systems has arisen to monitor the quality for data produced with metrology standards, to properly and seamlessly archive and distribute the retained data, and, most importantly, to keep a close track of the performance of observing systems along with their smooth integration of different satellite products.

In this Special Issue of Advances in Satellite Altimetry, we invite researchers and engineers from all disciplines to submit manuscripts presenting recent advances in the field of radar and laser altimetry, including recent and future altimetry missions (e.g., Sentinel-6 MF, ICESat, SWOT, Sentinel-3 Next Generation, CRISTAL, Quanlan, HY-2, etc.), their processing algorithms, calibration/validation and their applications and encourage the submission of review manuscripts exploiting the historic altimetry records and their applications in the spatio-temporal monitoring of Earth’s systems on all scales. 

Dr. Stelios Mertikas
Dr. Xiaoli Deng
Dr. Jérôme Benveniste
Guest Editors

Manuscript Submission Information

Manuscripts should be submitted online at www.mdpi.com by registering and logging in to this website. Once you are registered, click here to go to the submission form. Manuscripts can be submitted until the deadline. All submissions that pass pre-check are peer-reviewed. Accepted papers will be published continuously in the journal (as soon as accepted) and will be listed together on the special issue website. Research articles, review articles as well as short communications are invited. For planned papers, a title and short abstract (about 250 words) can be sent to the Editorial Office for assessment.

Submitted manuscripts should not have been published previously, nor be under consideration for publication elsewhere (except conference proceedings papers). All manuscripts are thoroughly refereed through a single-blind peer-review process. A guide for authors and other relevant information for submission of manuscripts is available on the Instructions for Authors page. Remote Sensing is an international peer-reviewed open access semimonthly journal published by MDPI.

Please visit the Instructions for Authors page before submitting a manuscript. The Article Processing Charge (APC) for publication in this open access journal is 2700 CHF (Swiss Francs). Submitted papers should be well formatted and use good English. Authors may use MDPI's English editing service prior to publication or during author revisions.